The Bakery Building
Downtown Vancouver's oldest survivors tend to be banks, hotels, and storefronts. This one was built for people who worked with their hands. For over 140 years, 506 Washington Street has housed blacksmiths, bakers, sign painters, leather workers, and musicians — the trades that helped Vancouver grow, even as they were squeezed out of downtown commerce. In December 2024, the building was placed on the Clark County Heritage Register.
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1858–1883 · The Land
Donation Land Claim to Town Lot
The lot sits on the Esther and Amos Short donation land claim, carved from territory once controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1858, Esther Short — by then a widow running the Pacific Hotel — sold the parcel to Hiram Cochran, a master carpenter who served as Clark County postmaster under Lincoln and Grant. In 1883 the land reached William Delay, who sold it for $800 to a German-born blacksmith named William Wollenweber.
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1883–1911 · Blacksmith Shop
Wollenweber & Zeek / Frank Suhl
Wollenweber and his partner Zeek opened a blacksmith and machinist shop on the corner of 5th and Washington, advertising that they could "repair machinery and wagons." A local paper later quipped that Billy "can mend anything from a horse shoe to a locomotive." By the 1890s the shop belonged to Frank Suhl, once called "one of the best blacksmiths that ever struck an anvil," who did contract repair work for the city until 1911, when he sold the property — building, lot, and all the machinery — and retired to travel the country.
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1911–1925 · The Bakery Era
Royal Baking Company
The Heusner family, bakers from New York, bought the shop and transformed it into the Royal Baking Company. They added two white enameled ovens at $2,000 apiece and their famous "Big 'R' Bread" — every loaf "a full 16 ounces before it goes into the oven." A new brick salesroom went up in 1913; by 1922 the plant was turning out up to 30,000 loaves a day, shipped by truck and rail as far as Pendleton, Oregon. The building's basement still holds the glass-block vaults, the coal chute, and the original wood columns. After multiple fires, a foreclosure, and a sheriff's auction, the bakery era ended in 1927.
The Kiggins Theatre sign, built by a later tenant of the building — one of the iconic neon pieces made here. Click to enlarge. -
1929–1955 · Sign Craft
Vancouver Sign Co., Garrett & Weber, Garrett Sign Co.
In 1929, Bill Cole moved the Vancouver Sign Company into the building and turned it into a full neon shop — the era's "liquid fire." From this address VSC fabricated some of the most recognizable signs in Southwest Washington, including the original Kiggins Theatre sign and the "Welcome to Vancouver" billboard on I-5. The company left in 1946 for larger quarters on Columbia Street, but the sign trade stayed: Garrett & Weber Signs operated here in the mid-1950s, dissolving famously when Weber wanted to spend a big commission on furniture and Garrett wanted to expand the business. Garrett Sign Company — still operating in Vancouver today — was born of that split. Hanging implements for signs can still be seen on the basement's floor joists.
Vancouver Sign Company's shop at 506 Washington, 1930–1946. Click to enlarge. -
1946–1959 · In Between
Dean Weber Displays & Engineered Heating Co.
The postwar years brought shorter tenancies. Robert DuBois opened Engineered Heating Co. here in 1946, selling oil-burner conversions to a city switching off wood and coal furnaces. Artist Dean Weber — who had painted morale posters at the Alcoa plant during the war — ran his art supply shop and the only commercial gallery in Vancouver out of the building before moving to larger space in 1956.
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1960–1991 · Leather & Lottery
Kuchera & Son
Kuchera & Son, a leather and shoe-repair firm founded in Tacoma in 1900, moved into 506 Washington in 1960 under Max Theobald — a longtime employee who inherited the company from its founder's family. To keep the shop solvent in a fading downtown, Theobald worked three jobs for five years straight. In the 1980s he supplemented shoe repair with one of downtown's first online lottery terminals, next door to the state's champion ticket-selling grocery store.
1983 — click to enlarge 
1986 — click to enlarge -
1980s · Interlude
Dick Hannah Honda
Washington Street between 4th and 9th was Vancouver's auto row, and for a stretch in the 1980s this address served as a Dick Hannah Honda dealership before the lot passed through Cascade Leasing to the Brislawn family.
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1995–Today · Briz Loan & Guitar
Rock 'n' Roll Pawn Shop
In 1995, Vancouver native Matt Brislawn — after working in Seattle at Capitol Loans and inspired by The Trading Musician during the peak of the grunge era — opened Briz Loan & Guitar here, holding the last downtown pawnbroker's license issued before new zoning pushed them out. For over three decades, Briz Loan & Guitar has been serving local musicians with music gear in this historic building — making it the longest continuously operating business the building has ever housed, surpassing even Kuchera & Son's three-decade tenure.
Briz Loan & Guitar, 506 Washington Street. Click to enlarge.
Sources
Summarized from the Clark County Heritage Register nomination and staff report (PRJ-169479/LUP-84598), researched and prepared by Cameron Smith, Pepper Kim, and Katie Bush of the Clark County Historical Museum, 2024. Thanks to the Clark County Historic Preservation Commission. Read the full nomination report.
Special thanks to Dean Irvin and Katie Bush for their guidance on navigating the nomination process.
